Charmed & Enthralled.

I wasn’t sure when we had gotten so old, it seemed like yesterday we were kids getting drunk off our asses and laughing at things that to outsiders, wouldn’t seem funny. I remembered her light brown hair swinging past her with every step she took and her perfect skin almost reflecting the moonlight. That all seemed like a lifetime ago.

Now, I was laying in a hospital bed with so many tubes in my body it didn’t even seem like I was even breathing for myself. I looked at the woman sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable chair and smiled, she still looked like an angel when she slept. Seventy years together and she was still by my side, I cringed at the thought of how much time had passed. How much time I had taken for granted, the times I could’ve held her in my arms and laughed at the television, the times I went to bed early instead of whisking her away from the dishes and dancing with her in the kitchen. Something about facing death makes you reflect on the life you led.



I met Aria MaryElla Kensington on a Tuesday. It’s hard to forget the day that your life changes forever. She was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette and occasionally looking up from the ground and searching for something. I bit my lip and wondered if I should bother her, I had seen her around, but never had the nerve to talk to her. She looked up and her green eyes locked in with mine, suddenly my body started moving towards her and I panicked, unsure of what to do or say to make this any less awkward. I stopped in front of her and she stared at me curiously as my mind blanked, I turned to walk away when she spoke, “Hi.”

“Hey… I am, uh, John…” I sputtered out awkwardly, I wanted to find a giant rock to immediately hide under. Somehow she had managed to make me forget my own name. She took on last drag before putting out her cigarette under her black flats and with her now free hand extended it to me.

“I’m Aria,” She smiled back at me. I melted into an odd comfort as all my nerves relaxed. Suddenly, I felt at home, like this was where I should’ve been all my life.

“So are you waiting for someone? Or…” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans, wishing it wasn’t so hot outside. I stared at the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and tops of her cheeks, she had dimples that made her look innocent and a kindness that radiated an aura around her. I was in total awe.

“Nope, just enjoying the day,” She answered with a mischievous smile on her face. I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, to me the day was disgustingly hot. After reading my face, she laughed with a pink blush on her cheeks. “Sorry, no one can ever tell when I’m being sarcastic or not. I am actually waiting for Triple A to get here because my piece of shit car has decided to break down once again,” She sighed loudly, checking her phone once again.

“Well, I could maybe help you, if you want! I mean, I’m not sure how much good I would be able to do…” I offered, removing a hand from out of my pocket to ruffle my hair. I couldn’t help but stick my foot in my mouth, but she still smiled.

“That’d be wonderful, you are, like, the first person to even offer it! They say chivalry is dead,” Aria laughed, gently slapping my arm. I found myself laughing along, something about hers was contagious.



It wasn’t long till we were constantly with each other. There was something about her that never got boring or old. Unfortunately, this had resulted in me landing in the friend zone. I never had the guts to tell her that I loved her or that I really, really wanted to kiss her. Aria Kensington wasn’t the kind of girl who would wait around forever, she always used to say she was too impatient for love, but I was patient enough for her.

We sat on fake astroturf lawn in the backyard while the party raged on inside. A stolen, half-empty twelve pack of beer sat between us. She cracked open yet another beer, I was sure she was drunk, but she never let anyone tell her what to do or what she could or couldn’t handle. She finally sighed and buried her head into her knees.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, starting out serious, but as she turned with a huge, childlike smile on her lips, I began to laugh. She abruptly moved, adjusting her head on the palm of her hand before taking big gulp of beer, she sighed again. “Aria,” I spoke in a pseudo-condescending tone, giving her my crooked smile. Then the thoughts began, tell her you wrote songs about her, tell her everything or better yet just lean over and kiss her! I always pestered myself with things I’d never do.

“John,” She giggled, trying to mock my tone, but failing miserably. She puffed out of frustration before turning to face me with her whole body. Her legs seemed to go on forever in a pair of shorts and loose silk top. “I like you, and I thought I could try and get over it, but I really like you. I thought you might like me too and I was waiting for you to ask me out or something but-”

I didn’t let her finish, all I did was close my eyes and press my lips onto hers. She seemed startled at first, but when she kissed me back, I had adrenaline coursing through my veins. It felt like a hurricane in my stomach and meanwhile, an overwhelming sense of calm. It was a plethora of contradictions, but as our lips parted and I looked into her eyes there was only one: love.

“So do you like me? Check yes or no,” Aria joked, her left side of her lip curling up. I knew it meant she was joking, I had studied her face every time we were together. I wrapped my arm around her and had a confident smile on my lips.

“Yes, duh,” I muttered. She laughed and elbowed me in the ribcage making me chuckle. We both started laughing and our friends starting trickling out to join us.

“Are you guys finally admitting you love each other,” Eric teased, both of us lifted up our middle fingers in unison. I turned at her, sipping a beer and tossing one to his best friend. That was the moment I realized I never wanted to be without her.



There are some days, I won’t ever forget. When our band got signed, when we first toured internationally and our band’s first show. Those aren’t the achievements I remember when I think of my life. I think of the day I married her, the smile on her face as I lifted up her veil after we had pledged our lives to each other; the way her hair fell into her face as we danced the night away. The day our children were born and our children’s children. The nights we were beyond stressed out, sleep deprived by newborn cries and we weren’t sure if we could pay the bills that month; we would just cry until we started laughing at the fact we still didn’t know what the hell we were doing.

I recall on the eve of Aria’s thirty-fifth birthday, she had seemed upset for the past couple of days. She sat at her vanity mirror, inspecting the fine lines forming on her face and examining her head cautiously for grays. She put on yet another cream, I grabbed our six-year-old daughter and whispered instructions, resting against the doorway as I watched.

“Mommy, psst, Mommy!” She whispered quite loudly, Aria smiled graciously. She was still the kindest and most loving person I had ever met, it drew everyone around her in and it made her a wonderful mother. I stared at her and caught an image of my own reflection in the mirror. I had quit the band and gone back to school, not because I didn’t still love music, but the fact was I had a family to support. Three kids to send to college and a mortgage to pay- I just grew up.

“Yes, Emma, my darling?” Aria turned and smiled, tapping the bottom of her chin with index finger.

“Daddy told me to tell you that he loves you,” Emma whispered in the same exact tone, she turned looking at her father to make sure she had repeated it correctly. I smiled at her, which caused her to erupt into a fit of giggles. “Mommy, what are you putting on your face?” Emma stood on the tips of her toes scanning all the jars and bottles of skin care products and makeup that littered the countertop.

“Makeup, would you like some?” Aria laughed, lightly swirling some blush onto the tip of a brush and tapping it before holding it, awaiting her answer. Emma smiled excitedly revealing a missing tooth, Aria put some on the apples of her cheeks. “Oh, what a pretty girl. We are so lucky, we have the prettiest little girl in the whole world!” Aria smiled, turning to me. I nodded in agreement.

“Emma, go see if your brothers are ready to go out to dinner, okay?” I directed her before closing the door. Aria returned her view to the mirror and tears began to fill her eyes, I felt just as awkward as the first time we met as I sat next to her. “What’s wrong, Aria?”

“John, will you still love me when I’m old and grey? When I get lose my figure? When I even look so old, I look nothing like I did when we first me?” Aria asked, a tear falling from her eye. Before I could even answer she turned to me and smiled, grabbing my hand, “I don’t know how time passed by so quickly…”

“I will always love you, Aria, I look forward to getting old with you. There’s no better company I could think of…” I reassured her.

“How’d I get lucky enough to catch a guy like you, John O’Callaghan?” Aria smiled, kissing my lips gently. I didn’t tell her at the moment, but I was thinking the same thing about her.

“Ewwww! Gross! Mom! Dad!” Our middle son interrupted loudly, I rolled my eyes and gave Aria a reassuring smile before turning to him. He was turning nine soon, I wondered where the time had gone. Soon, he would be a teenager and we were not looking forward to that. Turns out that when you have kids, time seems to speed up. One minute, you’re having watching them walk for the first time and the next, they’re leaving for college, getting married and having children.



It wasn’t always good times, there were times when I thought we would never make it. Times when it certainly would’ve been easier to call it quits, but when you love someone you work through the bad times, through the times you swear you’d rather kill them than talk for another second. It was a rainy night in September, we hadn’t even been married for eighteen months yet.

I came home at two o’clock in the morning, well I came stumbling into the house. I was beyond drunk, Jared had to walk me into my house and he saw Aria, six months pregnant (and therefore extremely emotional). My eyes were so cloudy, I could barely make her out, but I knew it was her. “Oh ssshit, w-why are you still up?” I slurred, with one arm wrapped around Jared for support.

“God, John, when are you ever gonna grow the fuck up?!” She shouted, her voice breaking with raw emotion and I felt my heart break. Jared walked me over to the couch and almost like a switch she was back to caring person, “Jared, do you need anything? Thanks for bringing him home. Are you hungry or anything?” She asked, completely sincere. It’s hard when no matter how badly you want to hate someone, you can’t because you love them too damn much. Jared must have felt awkward because all I remember was him practically running out the door.

Now, the beginning of this fight is a complete blur, because I was completely drunk. As I began sobering up, I could remember her face becoming clearer, dishes being thrown and the two of us shouting loudly; shouting words we didn’t mean, words designed to hurt each other.

“I hate you, John, I wish I had never married you!” Aria sobbed loudly, trying to remain on the offensive, but instead she fell to the floor, placed her face into her hands and cried. I felt tears under my own eyes as well. I sat down on the floor next to her and we sat in silence for a while, before the daunting reality hit us: we we’re in trouble. I sat next to her and grabbed her hand tightly, she squeezed back. We didn’t know if it was enough, but we were both still there next to each other.



I sat for a while, placing an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth and took a deep breath. Now, an eighteen-year-old blonde sat next to me, a spitting image of Emma. My granddaughter Lucy sat next to Aria, now awake, and looked at me, waiting for my answer. “Grandpa?” She laughed, I wrinkled my nose- I was old, not senile.

“My greatest accomplishment is,” I began, slightly wheezing from dryness in throat. Maybe it was old age, maybe it was a disease, but that was why I was in here to figure it out. Aria looked at me, the same kindness in her eyes and I swore with each passing moment I fell more in love with her. “Growing old with you,” I smiled, grabbing her hand and rubbing my thumb against the back of her hand.



My grandfather passed away a few hours later, the doctors said it was stage four Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and it was miracle he had been walking around for as long as it did. They said it would’ve been painful, it only made my grandmother cry more. He struggled with his last breaths, the only thing he said was “I love you and I’ll be waiting,” looking right in my grandmother’s eyes. I spent a while trying to figure out what he meant, but my grandmother knew, I could tell by the way she smiled completely assured.

Grandmother seemed to be an empty shell of a person, completely put together externally, but like there was a pain. As if it was painful just to breathe in or fake a smile. When I had tried to cheer her up, she simply pulled me into a hug and whispered, “When you spend almost every day of seven decades with someone and suddenly they’re gone, you can’t even remember how you lived without them.” A tear fell down her cheek as she smiled at me.

My grandmother’s eyes had always been young, with a vivaciousness in them. Both my grandparents, still made dirty jokes and could laugh at the silliest, most juvenile things. Even when my grandfather got older and retired from the production company he had built from the ground up, he took my grandmother and I to Disneyland. Without him, she looked tired and more fragile.

She didn’t even make it to his funeral, three days later, she passed away. The doctors said it was a heart attack, but she had never had any health problems. When she passed, I didn’t cry. I knew it was more painful to live here without her husband, best friend and true love. I knew they were together now, which is all they ever would’ve wanted.

I stared at the picture of them holding hands when they were my age and I smiled. Seventy years and still in love, I hoped and prayed for a love like that. The next day, I was walking through campus, practically mowing people down to get to class when I crashed into another person. I groaned looking at all the papers scattered across the quad, when I started collecting them I looked up, remembering to check on whoever I had bumped into to make sure they were okay.

I looked up and saw the kindest brown eyes looking back at me. My stomach immediately dropped and my nerves kicked in, as if I had been hit by lightning. We stared at each other collecting loose papers until I smiled. “Hi.”

“Hey, uh, I’m, uh, David…” He sputtered out. I laughed glad he was feeling as awkwardly as I was. I felt my cheeks heat up in a pink blush and I put a piece of paper back into my notebook before extending my right hand.

“I’m Lucy,” I smiled so brightly my cheeks were beginning to hurt. “I’m sorry, I was in a hurry. I wasn’t really looking where I was going,” I began to rant until I looked into his eyes again and calmed down.

“Oh, no it was totally my fault, I didn’t even see you,” He apologized handing me some of my chemistry notes. I tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, something about him that made me feel like I was at home. “Maybe I could buy you lunch? You know, to make amends?” He said with a flirtatious smile and I didn’t even think, my head simply started nodding.

“Yeah, that sounds really, really good,” I agreed.

The rest is history.